STEPS Seminar: The Entrepreneurial State and the Risk-Reward Nexus: Implications for Innovation and Inequality

Mariana Mazzucato, Professor of Economics and RM Phillips Chair in Science and Technology Policy at SPRU Science and Technology Policy Research at the University of Sussex, will give a STEPS Seminar on Tuesday 16 April on a new framework to study the relationship between innovation and inequality.

Mariana will present a new framework, called the Risk-Reward Nexus, to study the relationship between innovation and inequality. She asks: What types of economic actors (workers, taxpayers, shareholders) make contributions of effort and money to the innovation process for the sake of future, inherently uncertain, returns? Are these the same types of economic actors who are able to appropriate returns from the innovation process if and when they appear? Who takes the risks and who gets the rewards?

 

She argues that it is the collective, cumulative, and uncertain characteristics of the innovation process that make this disconnect between risks and rewards possible. When, across these different types of actors, the distribution of financial rewards from the innovation process reflects the distribution of contributions to the innovation process, innovation tends to reduce inequality.

 

When, however, some actors are able to reap shares of financial rewards from the innovation process that are disproportionate to their contributions to the process, innovation increases inequality. The latter outcome occurs when certain actors are able to position themselves at the point where the innovative enterprise generates financial returns; that is, close to the final product market or, in some cases, close to a financial market such as the stock market.

 

These favored actors then propound ideological arguments, with intellectual roots in the efficiency propositions of neoclassical economics, that justify the disproportionate shares of the gains from innovation that they have been able to appropriate. These ideological arguments invariably favor shareholder contributions to the innovation process over both worker contributions and taxpayer contributions.

 

The seminar will take place on Tuesday 16 April, 1pm-2.30pm with a room yet to be confirmed at the University of Sussex, Brighton. The room confirmation and further details will be added to the STEPS Centre event page very soon.

Further Reading

• The Risk-Reward Nexus in the Innovation-Inequality Relationship Mariana Mazzucato and William Lazonick, forthcoming in (Summer 2013) Industrial and Corporate Change, special issue on: Finance, Innovation and Growth (ed. M. Mazzucato)
• Innovation: let the good risk-takers get their reward, blogpost by Mariana Mazzucato and William Lazonick for the Guardian's Comment Is Free site
• The Entrepreneurial State by Mariana Mazzucato, Demos (2011) ISBN 978-1-906693-73-2

This article was originally posted on the The Crossing.

Zimbabwe has a new Constitution, but disputes over the land provisions continue

On March 16^th, Zimbabweans voted on a new Constitution in a national referendum. The voting was largely peaceful, and the turnout higher than expected, with over 3 million people voting. With all major parties supporting it, the result was a resounding 93% ‘yes’. This endorsement paves the way for elections in the coming months. It is also an important signal that a new commitment to moving forward has been reached, one that international donors have agreed to respect with the removal of further 'sanctions'.

The Constitution is naturally a compromise document, one hammered out in parliament by all the parties. It involved wide consultation, with inputs from the public. Given Zimbabwe's immediate political past, it is in many respects a remarkable achievement. It is of course rough at the edges, and not everyone agrees with every section, but it now does exist, and should, in my view, by celebrated.

Of course one of the controversial areas has been the issue of land (see earlier blog). Some are very unhappy about the provisions, blaming the MDC in particular for conceding too much. Ben Freeth, the former farmer activist, is particularly outspoken. In a slightly more considered contribution, Dale Dore asks, can the new Constitution bring about a just, legal and transparent land policy? He answers,

"The prospects, unfortunately, look decidedly bleak. Chapter 16 entrenches the outcome of land invasions and the seizures of farms and property. The draft Constitution also retains provisions under section 72 that are inimical to international law, human rights and the rule of law".

What then are Dore’s complaints? He argues that the separation of provisions on property rights from rights over agricultural land is a big mistake, as the section on agricultural lands restricts rights, running against natural justice. He is particularly concerned about the long-talked about Land Commission, as he thinks it will not have teeth, and will be easily captured. He notes:

"The most important retreat, however, has been to make the Land Commission an advisory body to Government rather than an independent parastatal organisation with executive authority. The Commission may make recommendations on a host of issues – including land tenure and compensation – but it lacks any real powers of implementation or teeth for enforcement. Decisions governing land remain firmly in the hands of the President and his appointed minister"

While Section 297(6)" tries to give the impression of independence and impartiality", he argues that this is not sufficient. This he worries will mean that a Land Audit, also a requirement in the Constitution, will not be fair, as it will be overseen by the Commission.

Overall he argues, that the section on land – Chapter 16 – "maintains all the discriminatory provisions governing farmland found in the current Constitution". He argues that there will be inadequate notice of compulsory acquisition and that compensation will be paid for improvements only, and not the full value of the land. He objects to the proposed dispute settlement mechanism, arguing runs against basic principles of 'rule of law', being an administrative not judiciary process. He argues that, as a result, the Constitution is not in line with earlier rulings by the now disbanded SADC Tribunal ruling.

Yet, as I and others have commented before, this obsession with this particular ruling forgets that the proposed constitutional provisions are actually in line with much international practice, and perfectly compatible with 'the rule of law', as long as the rules and regulations are abided by. This of course is the critical point. The test will be in the practice, and the demonstrated impartiality and effectiveness of systems of land acquisition, compensation and dispute settlement. Given recent experience, Dore and others are right to be concerned, but have no real argument for rejecting the provisions as a whole.

Before jumping to excessively negative conclusions, we have to understand the political context for the new Constitution, in order to judge it properly. In a heated debate at the end of February on the new Constitution, chaired by Violet Gonda in the Hot Seat slot on SW Africa Radio, Professor Brian Raftopoulos commented:

"Well I think the first thing to point out is that this constitution was a central part of the mediation process. It was always therefore going to be a compromise document and part of a broader process of trying to establish the conditions for a free and fair election – which was the original objective of the SADC mediation. There's clearly things in the constitution which are problematic; there's also things which I think establish a very good basis for moving forward and I think that as part of a long term process of discussion between the parties which was established through the mediation, it's a step forward and one should look at it as that".

On land, he notes:

"This land process has produced many contradictory results. As recent research shows, it hasn't been the complete failure people thought it was but at the same time it hasn't ended the land question. It's raised a whole series of new issues, which are going to confront Zimbabweans throughout – for the coming decades. So this issue hasn't been resolved and there are harder questions ahead".

Of course the land question is not going to be fully resolved by the Constitution. But hopefully the Constitution sets the basic parameters: the land reform is not reversible; rights to land are circumscribed by the state to avoid abuse; compensation for improvements are offered if land is acquired by the state; land administration and distribution is overseen by a competent authority in the Land Commission; and abuses are corrected through a transparent Land Audit. All of these provisions are actually good ones, and compatible with international practices, but will only work if the appropriate political and administrative conditions apply. Given recent experience, this is of course a concern, and why a wider political resolution of the on-going political impasse in Zimbabwe is so urgently needed.

However, given that it has now been approved by the referendum, and given that the Constitution represents an important moment in the mediation process to create such political conditions, surely its basic principles need now to be respected. Sure, there will be need for working out the details of the Commission, the Audit and the associated regulations to govern any land administration processes, but the overarching basis for these, surely, is now set.

Or is it? Dale Dore refers to a discussion with a 'senior MDC politician' who noted that: "The MDC had to make compromises. If it conceded to ZANU(PF) on the land issue, he said, "so what?" Anyway, he added, land is not a major issue for the great majority. The issue of land and land policy was something the MDC could fix once in power". This seems more like a threat to unravel things that have been agreed, even as reluctant compromises. In an email exchange on Dore's piece as part of probably the most bizarre email list I am copied in to, Eddie Cross MP, the MDC's Policy Coordinator General (who supported a yes vote with 10 reasons), commented on 10 March, "Excellent as usual – but so long as everyone understands that this was the main focus of concession to the views of Zanu PF in the negotiation and was a compromise – it is not the final word on the issue of agricultural land".

Yes the Constitution is a compromise. Yes it emerged through negotiation between parties that did not agree. And, yes, it is not the final word. As Brian Raftopolous pointed out in the SW Africa Radio discussion, "there are still a lot of issues around the land [issue] which wouldn't necessarily be dealt with simply through the constitution – issues which will have to be dealt with through legislation coming afterwards and through political and technical processes that need to take place in the aftermath of what has happened".

But does this mean that the basic tenets of the Constitution should be dismissed? Technical and administrative details will be required of course, but should a party go into an election essentially saying that key sections are up for grabs? What if ZANU-PF said the same? There would, quite appropriately, be uproar. Equally, for the resumption of international development assistance to be conditional on changes to the now approved Constitution, as Dale Dore seems to suggest, would be madness.

The new Constitution, with its inevitable flaws, now at last provides the basis for moving forward: hopefully towards the removal of sanctions and free and fair elections in a few months time. This is by no means assured, and the unlawful arrests of MDC officials and their lawyer, Beatrice Mtetwa, does not bode well, with a return to ‘brute power’ suggested by some. But equally we cannot succumb to fatalism, a trait so common among the commentariat. Let us also hope that after the elections, the parties respect the Constitution and the painful, slow, but ultimately successful, process of creating it, with all its difficult compromises, was not in vain. A process of healing, compromise and looking to the future is what all Zimbabweans need above all. If any party comes into power and rips up sections of the Constitution they don't like, is this a good result? For this reason, I, for one, would favour another coalition government; one that, this time, is genuinely committed to national unity and development, so the spirit of compromise with all its awkwardness and faults, embedded in the Constitution provides the basis for a brighter future.

This post was written by Ian Scoones and originally appeared on Zimbabweland

Can the BRICS help Africa feed itself?

By Lidia Cabral, Future Agricultures Consortium

The BRICS Summit in South Africa this week is the fifth time that the unlikely club of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa have met to discuss international development – completing the first cycle of these meetings. Under the banner 'BRICS and Africa – Partnership for Development, Integration and Industrialisation', next week's agenda includes the creation of a BRICS Development Bank, the international monetary and financial system, opportunities for business and scientific collaboration, and South-South cooperation, particularly in Africa.

The questions of how Africa can feed itself, and how the agricultural sector can be a more effective engine for growth and development, have long been a target of international development efforts from Western donors, and regained momentum following the 2007/08 food price crisis. But the emergence of the BRICS as major players, has raised hopes that innovative agricultural models and experiments from Brazil or China can be transferred or adapted to African countries.

A panel at last week's Political Economy of Agricultural Policy in Africa conference, also in South Africa, discussed new research from our project on China and Brazil in African agriculture (CBAA) which explores how these experiments are playing out in practice.

It is tempting to talk of a revolution in international development: from North-South assistance to South-South co-operation. True, the BRICS make a diverse group: each has its own particular political journey, socio-economic profile, regional dynamics, and cultural identities. Yet they seem united, albeit not yet fully coherently, in an insurgency against the international establishment. With the gradual demise of the 'Global North', the BRICS appear increasingly confident to challenge the market-led economic paradigm, and push forward forms of capitalism led by the state. By 2020 the BRICS will, combined, account for nearly half of global GDP growth. There is little doubt that they are well-placed to change the global, and local, dynamics of international development assistance.

Are we, then, on the verge of a global revolution? What will be the impact on poverty and hunger in Africa? Answering these questions requires looking in more detail at what the BRICS are actually delivering on the ground.

One example of so-called South-South development co-operation is Brazil’s efforts to support agricultural development and food security in Africa. Brazil, a world-leading trader of a range of agricultural commodities (including beef, poultry, ethanol and soybean), has become known as a model of agricultural development. This model is characterized by strong state support, high levels of mechanisation and strong vertical integration of industry and exports.

But the country home to the ‘miracle of the Cerrado’, a region previously thought to be unproductive, is also home to a complex and often turbulent agricultural history. Beyond the better-known image of the Cerrado’s expansive and highly-mechanised soya and maize fields, there are other stories: family farms that produce the bulk of Brazil’s basic foodstuffs (including 87 percent of cassava and 70 percent of beans); landless farmers and minority communities struggling for land rights; agro-ecological alternatives to transgenic crops; the advancement of the agricultural frontier into Amazonia; and interactions and confrontations between government and society, which at times have opened up space for reform.

Those acquainted with the diversity of Brazil’s agricultural development within its territory may feel excited by the prospect of a Brazil-Africa dialogue for agricultural development and food security. But much of what has developed so far through the diplomacy-mediated channel of South-South co-operation does little justice to the country’s wealth of (positive and less positive) agricultural experiments, as the new CBAA project studies suggest.

How is Brazil interacting with African agriculture? So far, primarily through the transfer of research and technology, weighted towards a particular model of development focused on high-value export crops – such as cotton in Sudan and soya in Mozambique – and linked to global value chains. Meanwhile, Brazilian large farmers and agro-industrial corporations have been flirting with the prospect of accessing cheap land in the African savannahs for agribusiness development. A private fund has already been established to attract capital from Brazil and Japan for large-scale investments in soya and other cash crops in the Nacala corridor in northern Mozambique, a region with similar geographical features to the Brazilian Cerrado.

Yes, Brazil also has a strong narrative of family farming and food security, which, at the international level, is being discussed at the UN organizations in Rome, where Brazil presents itself as a Southern alternative.  At the level of co-operation with developing countries, however, this narrative is taking longer to filter through. 

What is holding back the Brazilian Ministry of Agrarian Development’s (MDA) promised support to Zimbabwean and Ghanaian smallholder farmers? And what version of Brazil’s nuanced family sector will be carried forward by the MDA? As the Brazilian academic Arilson Favareto remarked at the Political Economy of Agricultural Policy in Africa conference on politics and African agricultural development, Brazil’s family farming sector includes not only modernised and state-supported small farmers, but also poorer farmers who remain at the margins of Brazil’s current public policy framework. Which of these categories would be the most relevant benchmark for Africa’s average smallholder and severely resource constrained farmer?

Besides the MDA, there are other actors too. Brazil’s rural social movements have already started exchanging traditional seed management practices with peasant farmers in Mozambique and South Africa. Yet, to date, the use of such alternative perspectives in development cooperation remains an isolated case.

Is the hype, then, justified? There is no doubt that the BRICS could offer alternative development solutions to help Africa feed itself. With the support they offer, the BRICS are also expanding African governments’ room for manoeuvre in negotiating the terms of cooperation partnerships.

The question remains, however, whether those in power will opt for the recipes most suited to the needs of the many. So far, it seems that, for the many, the BRICS remain little more than an image of a promised revolution.

Lídia Cabral is a researcher at the Institute of Development Studies. She is the Brazil co-ordinator of the ESRC-funded China and Brazil in African Agriculture project.

Operating as a ‘One Health’ Consortium in Sierra Leone

by Catherine Holley, Research Officer, Dynamic Drivers of Disease in Africa

The Dynamic Drivers of Disease in Africa Consortium is focused on animal diseases which can be passed on to humans, known as zoonoses, in Africa.  These are an important issue for poverty and public health because many emerging infectious diseases are zoonotic and they have a big impact poor people’s lives and livelihoods.  As this is a complex issue our consortium involves many different types of researchers including social science, environmental science, veterinary experts, epidemiology, ecology and much more, really a ‘One Health’ consortium. 

Recently, the Sierra Leone team conducted some research piloting and planning.   There has been a journey to reach the point where different disciplines were able to meet and work together to pilot different methods.  This trip allowed us some innovative opportunities to conduct multidisciplinary work and triangulate information found from different methods. 

Lassa fever is the disease we are studying in Sierra Leone and symptoms include intermittent fever, headache, malaise and weakness. It is a serious disease and death can occur 10-14 days after onset of symptoms, so it is important to get to hospital quickly.  We were lucky enough to be shown around the Lassa fever ward in Kenema Government Hospital, which is solely for people suffering from this disease and is the only hospital in the area equipped to deal with these cases and all other hospitals refer patients there.  This helped to give us a clear understanding of the work they do and how cases are handled. 

Piloting
We visited two of the research villages and everywhere we went we received a warm welcome and the people living in the villagers willingly and enthusiastically gave us their time and knowledge on the issue of Lassa fever.  In each village we started with a village meeting explaining why we were visiting and what we wanted to do. 

In the first village we started with participatory landscape mapping, which involves the villagers drawing out their landscape, including crops, seasonal movements and reasons for different activities.  We then moved on to the village epidemiological map which was a map of just the village area, showing which families live in different areas of the village, rodent movements, where possible risk areas for rodents were (for example, toilets, garbage areas, wells) and finally we asked where people had had fevers and the effects of these to see the patterns of disease.

We also conducted a rodent and fever matrix.  This was to see the different types of rodents in the villages and the information the villagers had about them.  No rats were identified with disease.  We also asked them to identify the different types of fever people experienced.  The villagers identified mild, medium and severe fevers and favoured native herbs for treatment.  We are so interested in rodents because disease transmission is through a specific rodent species, so the prevalence of the virus is presumed to reflect the abundance of these.

In the second village we started with a focus group discussion based around questions we had from information that had been brought up in the previous village.  The villagers in this area had benefitted from visits by the Lassa fever outreach team and knew more about fever and that rats carried disease.

This was a great and useful discussion which provided us with rich information.  We then went on a transect walk.  This is a walk through the village where we were accompanied by a small group of villagers through the landscape. We visited different land and ecosystem types (as marked on participatory maps), and used this as an opportunity for ‘on the spot’ conversations about where people see rodents, and the activities that are carried out in different places at particular times of year.

Information from both villages came together to make a picture, for example the village epidemiological map done in the first village showed schoolboys to be a risk group and the villagers in the second villagers talked of boys hunting cats and rats, giving one possible explanation for this and some further areas to discuss.

Multidisciplinary working
The Sierra Leone team has specialists in social science, environmental science and medicine, ecology and epidemiology.  This is necessary because the disease is expected to increase due to climate and land use changes as well as improved monitoring of animal populations and pathogen screening. 

All three teams will undertake research at the same time, gathering information on the same villagers, land and houses. The time points are based on key moments in the farming and land use calendar, annual climate/rainfall cycles, and likely important time points for rodent population dynamics, and therefore possible variations in Lassa transmission dynamics.  Working together in this way will ensure that data is comparable and also allow teams to interact and learn from each other. 

Examples of how the teams will work together include the environmental science and epidemiological team sharing information so decisions on where to place rat traps can be based on the land use information gathered.  Additionally, the seasonal movements of men and women gained from the participatory mapping can be compared with the epidemiological data on prevalence of disease.  This can be triangulated with fevers identified in the participatory work as well as looking at the village made epidemiological map and comparing it to the blood sample data.  Another example is that the village epidemiological map (showing which people in which places have been sick and if this is where rats have been seen as well as showing their proximity to garbage, toilets, kitchens) can be  triangulated with the process based modelling of who is most likely to get the disease. So, after a busy week of planning, piloting and sharing ideas between disciplines everyone is now excited to begin the next stage of the work!

Images: 'Participatory mapping' and 'Transect walk' . Credit: Catherine Holley.

Extending the extension debate

By Rebecca Smalley
The challenge of finding effective ways to deliver extension services to farmers was starkly illustrated in a series of presentations made yesterday. In recent years the trend has been for private, demand-led approaches. Yet implementation often falls short.

Anne Mette Kjaer and Hannington Odame described how, in Uganda and Kenya, extension reforms have been reversed or failed to get off the ground. Uganda’s NAADS programme underwent large changes to reincorporate the public sector and local government involvement. This is due to political factions “wanting in” on the action, impatience with long-term initiatives, and bureaucrats not agreeing with the original values of liberalisation and privatisation. Short-term thinking of politicians preoccupied with election cycles and rent-seeking, but also of donors, has been a constraint on extension service delivery in Kenya, too.

Blessings Chinsinga questioned the very paradigm of private demand-led extension. In Malawi, he said, most farmers could not afford to ‘demand’ private extension services. And the idea that the private sector would provide its own extension agents has not materialised. Instead, NGOs are hiring government extension staff, who are already busy with the logistics of fertiliser subsidies.
In a presentation that gave a historical review of approaches to extension, Miguel Loureiro showed how the currently fashionable approach of ‘Agricultural Innovation Systems’ has origins not in agriculture but in thinking on innovation in industry. Of several objections to this approach was Loureiro’s concern that focusing on ‘innovative’ farmers to receive extension excludes other, more vulnerable members of rural society.

Lastly, Kojo Amanor presented an update from Ghana, where farmers have been offered a package of inputs as part of the Block Farming Programme. Amanor argued that smallholder-targeted extension has been used to integrate farmers into the value chain and provide opportunities for agribusiness. Describing a case in which input suppliers have been licensed by the government to provide new maize varieties developed outside Ghana, Amanor asked, who are the clients of extension officers? What is the role of extension? And should extension officers not respond to farmers’ preferences rather than forcing them to adopt inputs from agribusiness?

• For more on the event, including conference papers, programme and background, visit the Political Economy of Agricultural Policy in Africa event site.

World Water Day 2013: What’s missing in MDG7 for women and girls?

By Lyla Mehta

Access to water and sanitation for all is central to achieving global justice for women and girls. 780 million people still lack access to drinking water, and sanitation remains seriously off track with 2.5 billion people lacking access to improved sanitation. Better access to water and sanitation facilities can reduce poverty and provide immediate health benefits for women and girls as well as better educational and economic opportunities and life chances. As debates on the MDGs – and what comes after them - abound, World Water Day 2013 offers a timely opportunity to look at the MDG goal on water and sanitation and what it means for gender justice.

Why do Water, Sanitation and Hygiene Matter?
Excess water in the household can be used by women for their kitchen gardens and can provide additional nutrition to diets, especially to children. Women and girls gain privacy and dignity through proper sanitation and menstrual hygiene facilities. It is now well known that poor sanitation facilities in schools prevent girls from attending school, especially during menstruation. Girls are also overburdened by time-consuming water collection activities. The lack of sanitation facilities exposes women and girls to violence and rape.

Water and Sanitation Targets: Achievements and barriers
Although the Millennium Declaration, adopted by 189 countries, was originally committed to issues concerning social justice and human rights, in reality the process that unfolded has largely been about tracking goals, targets and abstract numbers. This is also the case in water and sanitation where global declarations and targets often do not match with the on-the-ground realities of poor women and girls where at the local level a politics of power and control shape outcomes for poor people, especially poor women and girls.

Inadequate indicators and definitions
In March 2012, the world had met the water MDG of halving the proportion of people without sustainable access to safe drinking water, well in advance of the 2015 deadline. This was a cause for celebration. However, the measurement of progress is by averages, which say little about regional variations and variations between socio-economic groups or by gender. Largely, the poor in remote rural areas and informal urban settlements have been by-passed but they are the most deserving.

The MDG definition of ‘improved’ sources does nothing to address issues concerning water quality and issues concerning operation and maintenance of the service. It does not acknowledge the time taken for water collection activities and the acceptable distance walked is up to one kilometre!  Cultural norms dictate that women and girls can spend between three minutes and three hours per day collecting water.  (Is it right for rural women and girls to be spending so much time collecting water in the 21st century?) In order to avoid the long trudge, women and girls often compromise and may collect water from sources that are less clean which can have knock on effects on their health and that of their family. 

Gender blindness has led to the MDGs ignoring critical issues relating to women’s interests at both macro and micro levels, including reproductive and sexual rights, and the importance of women’s access to land and productive water. The monitoring agencies all lack proper sex-disaggregated data making it impossible to monitor progress or devise gender sensitive policies. Data is essential if gender is considered to have any importance – to literally ‘count’.

Sanitation remains off track and there has been a tendency to ignore critical issues concerning sustainability. Constructing toilets does not ensure that they will be used, given prevailing socio-cultural norms and values. It is well known that in some parts of Africa, daughters-in-law will not use the same toilets as elder men and thus may require a separate facility. The targets and rewards systems that accompany sanitation programmes can often end up being a number counting exercise without ensuring long-term sustainability.

Looking forward
Even though water and sanitation were recognised as basic human rights in 2010 there is a considerable gap between rights talk and rights practice. Governments may not prioritise their national governments’ global commitments. Women’s participation in decision-making processes is often low and men continue to hold powerful positions in sector.  Women’s presence is often a requirement of the implementing agency but it can often be tokenistic or women and girls are made to devote their voluntary labour rather than have any clear influence or develop particular skills. Gender and other markers of identities mould allocation and access among users. In India, lower caste women (Dalits) continue to be considered ‘impure’ and are excluded from participating in programmes and indeed in using shared facilities. Disabled women all over the world are often doubly disadvantaged.  Accountability mechanisms for excluded women to demand their rights are weak throughout the world.

Current water and sanitation indicators to monitor progress are inadequate. They ignore gender dynamics, rights, equality, sustainability and equity concerns as well as regional variations.  It is encouraging that the post-2015 consultations and different working groups are focussing on these issues. There are also discussions to address intra-household inequality through disaggregating data by gender, age, health status, disability. Whether these issues stay on the agenda until the very end, is of course, up for grabs.

If human rights are included, new targets and indicators will also be set but equality can be  difficult to quantify. The new water and sanitation regime must avoid only focussing on the process of numbers and targets for these don’t capture the diversity of women’s choices and constraints and tell us little of local dynamics. Exclusion needs to be tackled head-on rather than to stop at the low-hanging fruit. Instead of asking who has gained access, we need to ask: who doesn’t have access and why? The strength of global action now needs to be measured in terms of rights, justice, inclusion and sustainability, as well as awareness of local contexts. This includes both local level action to higher-level ‘political will’ whilst drawing on and addressing the perspectives and interests of the poorest and most marginalised women.
This blog is based on a paper presented by Lyla Mehta at the 57th Session on the Commission on the Status of Women, New York, 6 March 2013.

Related links:
Commission on the Status of Women Session - including webcast
Shit Matters: The Potential of Community-Led Total Sanitation
STEPS Centre Water Domain

"Donors go home!" Money and politics in African agriculture

By Susanna Thorp, WRENmedia / FAC

"Donors just go home!" was the strong call made in a session on the progress made by the Comprehensive African Agriculture Development Programme (CAADP), 10 years after it was initiated. The progress made over the last decade, and what comes next, has been a recurring theme at the Political Economy of Agricultural Policy in Africa conference.

"African economies are growing at 4-5% so they have plenty of fiscal resources. If donors pulled out, African governments would have to respond in investing more in agriculture." However, echoing arguments made by Adebayo Olukoshi in his opening address on Monday, the CAADP panel re-emphasised that even if more resources become available, this would not necessarily lead to more investment in agriculture. "Agriculture is seen as a potential black-hole," said Mandivamba Rukuni. "We have to convince our banks and ministries of finance that their support will trigger more wealth; that for every dollar invested, a return of two to three dollars will be achieved."

CAADP could create a space for dialogue where conditions are currently difficult, according to Rukuni. But, a decade on, the Programme needs a positive vision, passion and confidence in African history and practices.

African governments have been criticised for their lack of political will in investing more in agriculture, and for a gap between rhetoric and action. Can donors be accused of the same thing? After the food crisis of 2007/8, John Barrett of DFID admitted, in the morning session, that donors woke up to the fact that they had neglected agriculture and rural development for the past 10-15 years. “There was a tremendous renaissance around tackling food security,” Barrett said. “And our commitment to reverse decades of neglect culminated in the Aquila Declaration. It was the first time we had a commitment, a number and a target but the challenge is how to transform that into food on plates. Five years on it is important for us to examine what impact that has had.”

“CAADP could be the best thing that has happened to Africa,” said Bubu Khan, although some countries are better than others at implementing it – and learning from their mistakes. “CAADP is one framework that has African ownership. However it now needs a strong focus on women and youth and a more pragmatic response on climate change.” Colin Poulton expressed concern that whilst 40 CAADP compacts have now been developed in recent years, many of these exist only on paper in order to be donor compliant and have not been implemented. “More monitoring and evaluation for effective implementation is required.”

However, what progress can be made when, as Chance Kabaghe ex Minister of Zambia stated from his experience, that “politicians will always take advantage – so will technocrats. We start out well with the best of intentions but we now have to ask ourselves how we best get out of the situation.” Gem Argwings-Kodhek threw out a challenge to his peers in suggesting “perhaps we need to hear more from the politicians so we get to know what they really think so we can enter into a more effective dialogue, instead of just talking to one another.”

Clash of beliefs

This blog was co-written by Fran Seballos, IDS and Nathan Oxley, FAC.

Why do African governments adopt their policies? Incentives – for example, the desire for politicians to adopt popular policies that will allow them to stay in power – play a part. But so do ‘policy beliefs’, which are constructed around ideology, as well as a sense of ownership and values.

Studies from Ghana and Uganda presented yesterday at the Political Economy of Agricultural Policy in Africa conference showed how a clash of policy beliefs can create real problems. Contrasting policy beliefs held by a ‘donor coalition’ and ‘domestic coalition’ in each country result in ‘two separate worlds’ or policy processes. In both coalitions, there was broad agreement that productivity was lower than desired. But the different understandings of underlying causes resulted in contrasting policy responses.

In Uganda, during the process of setting up National Agricultural Advisory Services (NAADS), there was a crucial split between two groups: a ‘radical’ coalition (associated with the World Bank and Ministry of Finance) which advocated radical reform to extension services – and a ‘gradual’ coalition (including the Ministry of Agriculture and local government) in favour of more gradual reform.

There was also a stark contrast in how the two groups saw themselves – unsurprisingly, in a favourable light – and each other. The radical group saw the gradual group as defending vested interests, while the gradual group saw the radical group as being captured by external donors and their reform models. At one point, the conflict led to the gradual group being virtually excluded from the policy process.
The research shows the impact of values, ideology and ownership on policy – factors which are sometimes under-recognised in discussions of the political economy of agriculture.

• Find out more on this research on the project’s website: Promoting Participatory and Evidence-based Policy Processes in Africa
   
• For more on the event, including conference papers, programme and background, visit the Political Economy of Agricultural Policy in Africa event site.

Rural communities and politics: not voiceless or docile

Politics and agriculture are not strange bedfellows, said Adebayo Olukoshi (International IDEA) in his opening keynote speech at the Political Economy of Agricultural Policy in Africa conference yesterday. The recent history of politics and land includes some dark moments, as well as some more positive ones: this year is the centenary of the 1913 Land Act in South Africa, but it is also 10 years since the Maputo declaration, which saw African governments come together to commit to greater agricultural development.

Many major changes are shaping the politics of African agriculture. Large scale land deals; food price volatility; large-scale land deals by external countries and companies; a growing urban population; and demographic changes are all having an impact. Despite the challenges, according to Olukoshi, many on the continent see a positive future. If Afro-pessimism was the mood 10 or 20 years ago, could Afro-optimism – or even Afro-enthusiasm – be a better description of the prevailing mood?

In a note of caution, Olukoshi warned that this enthusiasm may mask the challenges ahead. But it would be equally dangerous to think of smallholder farmers as being passive recipients or victims. Agricultural politics is not just for high-level discussions: change often comes from below.

Olukoshi criticised some analyses which, in his view, appeared to explain everything that goes on – or to pathologise agricultural politics. Instead, he urged the conference to look at the complex ways that actors negotiate interests to reach an equilibrium sufficient for the time.

Despite the enthusiasm in some quarters, farmers are set against a structure of incentives loaded against small-scale agriculture, inherited from colonial times and consolidated during the post-colonial period. But, said Olukoshi, it is a mistake to think that rural communities are voiceless or docile.

• For more on the event, including conference papers, programme and background, visit the Political Economy of Agricultural Policy in Africa event site.

Transforming the state: building security from below

Zimbabwe is often held up as the typical 'fragile state' in need of wholesale 'security' and 'governance' reform. Indeed such issues are high on the agenda of those debating Zimbabwe's transition. While we await the outcome of the vote on the new Constitution held on Saturday (almost certainly an endorsement), thoughts must turn to other aspects of the transition. Building a basis for effective governance and security from below is an essential part of realising the ambitions of the proposed Constitution. Developing a framework for support, including by donors who will now hopefully reengage with Zimbabwe, is essential.

A recent paper from the LSE's Justice and Security Research Programme by Robin Luckham from IDS and Tom Kirk from LSE offers some interesting perspectives, and challenges some of the core assumptions of a standard, donor-led reform agenda. Its findings are highly relevant to Zimbabwe, and it is well worth reading in full.

It starts from the observation that in many 'fragile state' settings, there are 'hybrid political orders' operating. Far from a situation of state failure, according to the OECD such societies:

[c]ontinue to function, to form institutions, to negotiate politically, and to set and meet expectations. Traditional forms of authority are not necessarily inimical to the development of rules-based political systems … In fact, the challenge is to understand how traditional and formal systems interact in any particular context, and to look for ways of constructively combining them. (OECD 2011)

This is certainly the case in Zimbabwe where a lack of security is creating vulnerability and risk for many citizens. Yet as the LSE paper notes:

"much mainstream academic and policy thinking that security is an almost self-evident public good unproblematically delivered by states or by the international community in situations of state failure. For the most part, this mainstream has showed little interest in unpeeling security's multiple layers of meaning; it has not properly investigated the relationship of security to political power; it has not scrutinised security as a politically contested object; and it has not on the whole looked at it from the perspective of end-users, i.e. those who are secured. Whilst new approaches to human and citizen security have challenged the state-centric bias of previous security thinking, they still tend to overlook security's relationships to political power, including its deeply contested nature in hybrid political orders".

So what are hybrid political orders? This literature refers to such phenomena as 'legal pluralism', 'twilight institutions' and 'mediated' or 'negotiated' states. Public authority is not fixed, and is continuously produced through negotiation across a range of actors. This challenges to rethink the nature of 'the state' in such settings, and indeed its assumed functions, including security, which may be delivered through multiple processes.

Even the World Bank, long an advocate of standard, western style governance reforms appears to accept elements of this argument. In its flagship World Development Report publication of 2011 it argued for 'collaborative, inclusive-enough coalitions' which 'restore confidence and transform institutions and help create continued momentum for positive change'. This is not an image of standardised, imposed governance and security reform.

But what political processes might help form such coalitions to deliver security? This is far from straightforward. Simplistic reform measures often advocated by donors as part of 'post-conflict' reconstruction interventions will not work. The LSE paper argues that "donor policies and programmes aiming to reform the security sectors of fragile and contested states should be viewed with a heavy dose of caution". The paper notes the extreme mismatch between a policy literature which "tends to assume that states and their security and justice institutions are capable in principle of delivering security if reforms are pushed through" and a critical research literature which "suggests that insecurity and violence may be entrenched in the heart of the state itself and 'work' to the benefit of predatory state and other elites".

The paper goes on "Thus, in countries with corrupt or abusive institutions… those responsible for delivering security and justice are often the perpetrators of insecurity…Conversely the alleged agents of insecurity… may offer alternative forms of protection or even claim to act as liberators". Thus in Zimbabwe, the state has often been a major source of insecurity, leading violence during election periods, intimidating people not towing the line, and overseeing a security apparatus that has its tentacles spread into every corner. Yet at a local level, it is sometimes war veterans – often seen as agents of disorder and disruption – who keep the peace, negotiating security through pacts with local leaders, traditional, religious and others. Allied at some moments with the central state, but highly disillusioned and resistant at others, such processes are typical of hybrid political orders, perpetually negotiated, always contingent and highly context specific. This is why generalised narratives about violence, insecurity and disorder are always inadequate, and require locating and specifying in better understandings of what happens in particular places, as we have long argued in our work on land reform.

Yet at a moment of potential transition, how can the state be reformed to allow for justice, security and rights for citizens after a period of turmoil, and capture by elites? A locale-specific, negotiated arrangement is clearly not enough, and is always fragile. In terms of the literature surveyed in the LSE paper, Zimbabwe can be characterised as a 'Contested Leviathan', a setting where state power is contested, but the apparatus of control is still in place, through the armed forces and the security services in particular, allied to a narrow political elite with waning support.

As the literature shows from numerous cases, "These contested Leviathans seldom give up their claims on power willingly or peacefully. Even when they do start to cede power to democratically elected governments, as in Egypt and Burma, their security apparatus may seek to co-opt the transitions and mould them to their own security-dominated vision of the polity"… "Under hybrid governance systems, security arrangements often protect elites, including security elites, and reinforce inequalities in power and wealth. They tend all too often to be deployed to close political spaces, reduce political participation and resist accountability"….[Formal arrangements] in turn "interconnect with the parallel powers of hybrid political orders, including systems of patronage, and the manipulation of ethnic and religious identities as instruments of security policy" [Such] "regimes and their security apparatuses may sometimes even thrive upon durable disorder and insecurity" Does this sound like Zimbabwe? Certainly it does, as Brian Raftopoulos and others have vividly described.

My colleague Mariz Tadros has shown in the case of Egypt, agents of state security act as parallel powers, intersecting with other corporate and political interests, and with influence deep into civil society. This can help perpetuate the legacies of injustice, even in supposedly democratic or 'post-conflict' states. For any country in transition, including Zimbabwe, this is an important lesson, felt acutely in Central America, and most recently in the Middle East.

The LSE paper makes the case that we need to understand what security looks like 'from below', i.e. from the perspective of 'end users' be these citizens of states, members of local communities or those who are marginalised. It is from here that a rebuilding of security must start, accepting hybrid political orders, but also addressing the political and social inequalities that come with them. A political process for rebuilding security, and with it the state itself, must start the paper argues with asking: "What are their vernacular understandings of security and how do these reflect the hybrid and contested nature of political authority at a local level? What connects their particular and local experiences and understandings to wider conceptions of citizen and of human security?

Only with a view of security from below can a legitimate and accountable state be rebuilt. This is an important set of ideas that has much relevance for the immediate future of Zimbabwe, and begins to put flesh on the idea of 'rebuilding public authority from below' we floated in our book. I hope those involved in this debate will learn as much as I did from this impressive paper and review of the literature.

Next week, the blog will reflect on the outcome of the vote on the Constitution, and in particular the implications for the land issue.

This post was written by Ian Scoones and originally appeared on Zimbabweland

The FAO Voluntary Guidelines: setting sail?

Image: Fishing community members, Zambia from
theworldfishcenter's Flickr photostream (by-nc-nd)

Around our conference on the Political Economy of Agricultural Policy in Africa, we are featuring a series of guest blogs.

This post is by Emmanuel Sulle, Researcher at the Institute for Poverty, Land and Agrarian Studies (PLAAS).

Amid the rapid acquisitions of tracts of land for production of food and energy feedstocks, and private forest plantations in developing countries in 2005-2009, the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) launched the consultation process to develop Voluntary Guidelines for the Responsible Governance of Tenure of Land, Forests and Fisheries in the Context of National Food Security.

After a consultation process in 2009-10, the final Voluntary Guidelines (VG) are based on the consensus on internationally accepted practices that are already in place and were negotiated upon by governments, a broad range of civil society organizations and the private sector. The VGs are the first global 'soft law' instrument on the tenure of land, fisheries and forests. They were officially endorsed by the Committee on World Food Security on 11 May 2012. Their implementation is already encouraged by the United Nations General Assembly and the Francophone Assembly of Parliamentarians.

The question is: what now? Despite this high-level endorsement, the ways the Guidelines are implemented at local, national and regional level will vary widely, and will be keenly watched by those with an interest in land issues.

Regional discussions: what do States make of the guidelines?
On 12–14 February 2013, FAO brought together 78 professionals from Anglophone countries to a Technical Awareness Raising Workshop on the Voluntary Guidelines in Kigali, Rwanda. This was the second of 10 similar regional events planned by the FAO. The invitees were largely from government related departments (land, fisheries and forestry) and representatives from NGOs, farmers associations and land alliances of participating countries.

The general aims of the Voluntary Guidelines are to achieve food security for all and support sustainable efforts towards eradication of hunger and poverty. They are also meant to secure sustainable wellbeing, environmental protection and socio-economic development. The VGs are intended to act as a reference for improving the governance of land, fisheries and forest tenure around the globe.

In particular, the VGs address the issue of land. The Guidelines stress the need to have equal access to land, fisheries and forests among men and women, and the upholding of customary land rights, including the rights of minority groups. They aim to improve the weak governance system which marginalizes the poor, who often lose out due to the lack of political support necessary to influence decision-making processes.

Some states are recognizing the importance of these guidelines. Officiating at the FAO workshop in Kigali, Rwanda’s Minister for Natural Resources Hon. Stanislaus Kamazi stressed the need to have a strong participation in the implementation and monitoring of the VG in each participating State. He described Rwanda’s thorough land tenure reforms and progressive issuance of leasehold titles across the country. A participant from Zambia also underlined his country’s commitment to have transparent discussions and include land in the process of writing the new constitution. The Regional Representative for the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa said that there is a clear consensus that land and land-based resources are of great importance to any country. The backward and forward linkages throughout the economic sectors are crucial to sustainable development.

Ways forward: the role of research
In principle, the implementation of these guidelines lies in the heart of each Member State. However, each institution, whether an NGO, research institution and/or land rights organization, has a right to monitor and advocate for the implementation of the very guidelines which many of these organizations participated in crafting.

For example, my organisation – PLAAS – participated in the formulation and deliberation of these guidelines. As such, PLAAS has a role to play in monitoring the implementation of VG in different areas where it works. Its strategy involves working with research project partners in Sub-Saharan Africa. Currently, PLAAS is working with professionals from universities and NGOS in Malawi, Zambia, Ghana, Zimbabwe, Namibia and Kenya to undertake studies on Commercialization of Land, and Land Grabbing, assessing the Implication for Land Rights and Livelihoods in Southern Africa. In each country, we are looking at how land deals are negotiated and implemented, and the possible impacts on different actors. The research seeks to identify the impacts of the large-scale investments to differentiated groups such as women and small scale farms.

The Future Agriculture Consortium and PLAAS will host a workshop for the Regional/SADC Policy Makers in June to discuss the Political Economy of Agricultural Policy in Africa and strategies to implement and monitor the Voluntary Guidelines.

PLAAS will also analyze the impact of the VGs on land-based and fisheries governance initiatives in several countries where there are ongoing studies. As an institution with long experience on land issues in southern Africa, this could be a way for PLAAS to build the capacity of the local partners to develop their knowledge on the VGs and make use of it.

Security of tenure for small-scale fisherfolk
For a number of years PLAAS has been involved in a number of research projects into the tenure-based management of fisheries: Defragmenting Resource Management in Southern Africa (DARMA), Too Big To Ignore (TBTI), Cross-sectoral Commons Governance (CROSCOG), WELFARE, and the Worldwide Fisheries Co-management project. All projects aim at finding solutions towards the vexing question of how to strengthen tenure for communities towards fish resources in order to stop and reverse the decline in fish resources so that fisheries can continue providing wealth and livelihoods for fishing communities across generations.

In South Africa, small scale fisheries were largely undermined by the fisheries legislation of 1998, which gave rights to commercial, sport and subsistence fishing only. Upset by the legislation, Civil Society Organizations and activists joined forces to have the rights of small-scale fisheries recognized and protected by law. As the result of these concerted efforts, the High Court ordered the government to protect the rights of small scale fisheries and told it to work with them to formulate a policy, which emerged in 2012.

Into the future, PLAAS and its collaborating partners may want to investigate the success, constraints and recommend ways forward for the realization of these Guidelines by studying the ongoing land registration projects in countries like Botswana, Mozambique, Rwanda and Tanzania, to understand the differentiated impacts of these projects in different groups and contexts.

Challenges of implementing the Voluntary Guidelines
There are many challenges which might hinder the smooth implementation of the Guidelines. Here are just a few of them:

• State Sovereignty: As clearly stated, the VG are soft laws – they don’t override State Sovereignty and the existing policy, legal and institutional frameworks. As such, it is difficult to impose them on any country that may not be willing to implement them.
• Existing initiatives: The Voluntary Guidelines have entered a space occupied by existing guidelines, for example the Framework and Guidelines on Land Policy in Africa (developed by the African Union, African Development Bank and the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa). For them to have specific influence, they must be integrated into such plans and being prioritized.
• Private sector commitment: One of the key stakeholders in the implementation of the VGs is the private sector, from investors to private developers. This was one of the issues of concern during the Rwanda workshop mentioned above, as their participation in the discussion of policy discourse has been absent or very minimal. 
• Funding for awareness raising, implementing and monitoring the VGs: Implementing these guidelines depends on the availability of resources such as funds and personnel. They will therefore sit on the shelf like many other documents, if the partners meant to implement them have no funding to disseminate, implement and monitor them.

Voluntary Guidelines: a vital tool to inform policy
Despite these challenges, these guidelines are a great tool for policy makers, researchers and advocacy institutions to use in their work around the tenure governance of land, fisheries and forests. To help this happen, a few activities should be considered:

• In each country, the FAO must launch this document in collaboration with the host country, in the presence of the CSOs, FBOs, and institutions dealing with land and fisheries rights, forests conservations and the research institutions such as universities. Out of this process, the country team for implementation, monitoring purposes needs to be established. CSOs dealing with the advocacy work on land tenure and rights may want to champion this process.
• The Guidelines provide an opportunity to influence policy making processes and/or amendments to law, to address issues of concern in the current legislation governing tenure of land, fisheries and forests. They need to be incorporated into the ongoing policy reforms in many African countries. There are clear examples where countries are adopting proposals made in the guidelines. Tanzania recently has announced a ‘land ceiling’ for foreign investments and it has limited the time such land can be owned.
• The Guidelines need to further inform discussions on pertinent issues to be included in national constitutions, particularly in countries where constitutions are being established, or where ongoing constitutional reform or review is taking place.
• Research and advocacy institutions need to produce relevant evidence and find ways to discuss it with policy makers and politicians, for example through policy briefings.

How are China and Brazil changing agricultural development in Africa?

A set of seven new working papers looks at how Brazil and China are changing agricultural development in Africa.

The China and Brazil in African Agriculture (CBAA) project analyses new patterns of development co-operation in Ethiopia, Ghana, Mozambique and Zimbabwe. It examines how Chinese and Brazilian understandings of agricultural development are translated in aid and investment projects.
The working papers look at the four countries in turn, and at the international, political and historical context of co-operation between countries in the global South.

Download the papers

• South-South Cooperation in Context: Perspectives from Africa
• Narratives of Brazil-Africa Cooperation for Agricultural Development: New Paradigms?
• Narratives of China-Africa Cooperation for Agricultural Development: New Paradigms?
• Chinese and Brazilian Cooperation with African Agriculture: The Case of Ghana
• Chinese and Brazilian Cooperation with African Agriculture: The Case of Mozambique
• Chinese and Brazilian Cooperation with African Agriculture: The Case of Ethiopia
• Chinese and Brazilian Cooperation with African Agriculture: The Case of Zimbabwe

These working papers are the first publications from the CBAA project. Other planned outputs are

• a geo-referenced database of agricultural co-operation projects in the four countries,
• in-depth case studies
• comparative analysis, and
• implications for the future of aid and investment policy in African agriculture.

The initial findings will be discussed in a panel at the Political Economy of Agricultural Policy in Africa conference on 19 March 2013.

Zimbabwe’s poultry industry: rapid recovery, but major challenges

Zimbabwe's poultry industry has shown massive growth since 2009. A range of sizes of units have sprung up everywhere – from the medium size units of 1000 birds to massive industrial scale operations. Chickens are big business.

Meat consumption has changed significantly in Zimbabwe over the last 20 years. Beef used to be the most consumed, with Zimbabweans eating on average 13kg per annum in the 1980s. According to a recent USAID report (see below), today this has dropped to only 3.3kg, the lowest in the region. Chicken and pork in particular have replaced this, with chicken consumption is now half of all meat consumed. Beef has dropped to only 35%. Meat consumption has rebounded since 2009 as the economy has improved, now estimated to be 11000MT per month, up by 20%. But the pattern of consumption has changed. This has been driven in part by taste, but also austerity as people looked to cheaper sources of protein. According to the USAID report, the retail price of economy beef which has the highest demand is between US$4.60 – US$5.00 per kg compared to the average chicken retail price of about US$3.30 per kg.

After the stabilization of the economy, many invested in poultry as a sure-fire way of making money. The data in the graphs below are from a recent World Bank report, showing the rapid increase in both broilers and layer production of day old chicks, according to Ministry of Agriculture (MAMID) data.
 

Day old chick production (layers)


Day old chick production (broilers)


But there are significant challenges to these new producers.  These centre in particular on competition from cheap imports, including illegal dumping. ZIMSTATS shows that in 2011 chicken imports were 25,500 MT at a value of $13.644 million or an average of only $0.53/kg. The low price suggests much of this is offal (including 'waste' pieces), which is illegal to import. Additionally the volume exceeds the official quota by over 100%, representing 20% of the total demand for chicken nationally, according to a recent USAID report (see reference below).

In addition the costs of feed have escalated. Soya production has been slow to rebound in Zimbabwe, and imports are costly as only Zambia produced GM-free soya in the region. These imports are expensive as Zambia tries to protect its own growing poultry industry. This really took off when Zimbabwe was suffering outbreaks of avian influenza in the early 2000s, and then subsequently when the Zimbabwe economy collapsed, and along with it its poultry industry.

The 2013 budget statement laid out the challenges for the Zimbabwean industry clearly:
• Stiff competition from cheap imports for both table eggs and meat, threatening viability of producers;
• Rising input costs, particularly maize and soya meal, following poor harvests; and
• High volumes of illegal imports which are being sold in the domestic market at sub-economic prices

The USAID study highlighted the challenge of cheap and illegal poultry imports for the meat industry as a whole. Much of the imported poultry meat comes from Brazil which has a massive poultry industry. Products that cannot be sold in the Brazilian markets are often transported elsewhere in the world. Feet, skin, necks and other 'offal' are frozen and packaged and sold at rock bottom prices.

Chicken pieces too are packaged and sold, again at highly competitive rates. Go to any Zimbabwean supermarket and you will find 1kg of chicken pieces being sold at $3, sometimes considerably less.

How these prices can be so low is beyond me. Maintaining a cold chain from Brazil to Zimbabwe must cost a fortune, let alone the cost of the product and its processing and packaging. While there are import quotas, many believe these are being exceeded through illegal imports. The import of offal is also illegal due to health and safety concerns. The USAID study recommended tighter import controls and the banning of offal imports, arguing that cheap imports were not only damaging the poultry industry, but also the beef industry as cheap meat alternatives were suppressing demand.

This is not just a Zimbabwean problem. In 2012, the South African government slapped on surcharges, provoking a row with the Brazil. Brazil responded by taking the dispute to the WTO, claiming that the South African's protectionist actions were threatening the new friendship developed between the nations as a result of the BRICS partnership. It seems the diplomatic heat, and the threat of a WTO case that the South Africans have backed down, at least for now.

Undeterred by this dispute from across the border, Zimbabwe has now responded to the same problem. The 2013 budget statement noted:

"Due to unfair competition from imports of chicken, local breeders are increasingly cancelling orders for day old chicks as they fail to secure customers for their chicken as imports from outside the SADC/COMESA region retail at prices significantly lower than locally produced chicken, notwithstanding the 40% duty levied on imported chicken…. Investigations indicate that chicken imports are either smuggled or are grossly undervalued for duty purposes. In instances of smuggling, the necessary veterinary and health hazard permit controls are undermined….".

From mid-November, the government introduced a higher customs duty "in order to level the playing field between imported and locally produced chicken".

This is an important and welcome move. Let's see if it has the effect it needs to. Hopefully the Brazilians will be less heavy-handed with Zimbabwe where the market is much smaller, and a trade dispute can be avoided.

Unfortunately, the issue is not just about formal trade. As already noted it is perhaps the illegal trade which is most significant, and damaging. This is well embedded in local Zimbabwean business networks, sometimes with high-level connections, and veterinary control and customs enforcement capacity remains weak. While chicken smuggling is perhaps less dramatic than drugs or diamonds, it has just as devastating an effect on the economy, lives and livelihoods.

Sukume, C. and Maleni, D. (2012). Beef CIBER Study. Constraints to Competitiveness. Unpublished report to the Zimbabwe Agricultural Competitiveness Program, DAI/USAID

This post was written by Ian Scoones and originally appeared on Zimbabweland

 

Decorating the Christmas tree with perfect Sustainable Development Goals?

By Katharina Welle, STEPS Centre PhD student

The 2013 STEPS Symposium on "credibility across cultures" examined questions surrounding 'best available' scientific advice in relation to global policy processes on sustainable development. One global process discussed at the Symposium is the current United Nations consultation process for setting new Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The SDGs will form the core of a new global development agenda that will replace the current Millennium Development Goals after 2015.

While following the consultation process – as I did for water supply and sanitation – it becomes clear that the discussion rallies, unsurprisingly, on setting new targets and indicators. To the credit of sector stakeholders, the sector-internal consultations have picked up many of the criticisms voiced against the MDG on water and sanitation: its focus on technical aspects of access to water supply at the detriment of other key aspects encompassing the human right to water (and sanitation).

The consultation document submitted to the UN proposes targets and indicators related to equity, equality and non-discrimination, and the sustainability of services. So far so good, but what about the reality of monitoring and the traction these will have in the political reality of service delivery?

This takes me to some of the comments made by the speakers at the relevant STEPS Symposium session "From MDGs to SDGs: aspirations, evidence and diversity in setting global goals". For me, the points made by Duncan Green, Senior Strategic Advisor at Oxfam GB (who blogs here), stood out. He highlighted the politics of setting global targets, comparing the process with decorating a Christmas tree: everyone picks and chooses what she wants to see represented under the SDGs. The real challenge however, according to him, is how the post-MDG agenda will influence national policy making?

So, are the SDGs likely to make a difference? Will they be able to influence national level decision making? Paying attention to the politics of knowledge production and to its contested nature, a key theme in the Symposium, is helpful in answering this question.

For instance, when reading the latest official global figures on water supply access in Ethiopia, we learn that rural water access reached 34% in 2010.  However, when comparing these with figures released by the Ethiopian Ministry of Water and Energy, we find that official access figures for rural water supply for the same year were 65.8%. So, which figure is right? Is there even an objective figure that I could confidently quote? Attempting a quick answer one could say that much of the divergence between the figures boils down to using different data sources, different indicators and different methods of analysis. In other words, each actor chooses its inputs in appraising rural water access based on political pressures, professional biases, institutional capacity to collect data etc.

The picture that emerges from such insights is starkly different from the seemingly objective reporting of progress against the global development targets: rather, monitoring can be likened to a theatre play where different actors stage performances that reflect their interests and political affiliations.

In Duncan Green's words it is "politics and power" that lie at the heart of global monitoring regardless of how inclusive the formulation of the new SDGs are going to be. Monitoring is infinitely manipulable – and therefore it is worth paying attention to the power and political dynamics in local monitoring settings rather than stopping short at the formulation of the 'perfect' target to decorate the SDG Christmas tree. 

This article was originally posted on the The Crossing.

Why don't we know how to control the spread of Lassa fever?

Researchers in Sierra Leone are looking at how to prevent Lassa fever - a particularly nasty haemorrhagic virus which can wipe out entire households - by controlling the multimammate rat, which carries the disease. In the past, research on Lassa fever has tended to focus on detection, vaccine development and treatment. This may reflecting the fact that wealthier countries fear the emergence of such viruses "out of Africa", as they see it. But there is much less evidence on prevention and control in areas where the disease is endemic.

The spread of Lassa could be affected by the way many houses are built (with wattle and daub walls, and mud floors), as well as changes in land use (as some farmers move from subsistence rice farming to more commercially-attractive cassava, rubber and biofuel production).

Dr Lina Moses, one of the researchers in the Dynamic Drivers of Disease in Africa consortium, has written an article for the Guardian's Global Development Professionals Network about efforts to investigate how this largely neglected disease could be understood and controlled at a local level.

You can also listen to Melissa Leach interviewing Dr Donald Grant, Chief Physician of the Lassa ward at the Kenema Government Hospital, in the IDS podcast below.

Zoonoses- From panic to planning: Professor Melissa Leach interviews Dr Donald Grant by Ids (Uk) on Mixcloud

This article was originally posted on the The Crossing.

‘Evidence’ of the health risks of genetically modified maize represents an interesting new dimension to the ‘GM debate’ in Kenya

by Stephen Whitfield, KNOTS PhD student

The recent decision taken by the Kenyan Ministry of Health to impose a ban on the importation and consumption of genetically modified foods has highlighted ineffectuality in Kenyan government and, more surprisingly, is indicative of an interesting new dimension to the previously stale ‘GM debate’.

That is because, arguably for the first time, the anti-GM campaign has effectively made an ‘evidence’-based objection that has gained political traction.

Kenya’s GM ban followed a similar decision taken by the Russian government, and it was almost entirely in response to a subtly-promoted, peer-reviewed study at the University of Caen (in France), led by Gilles-Eric Séralini, which tested the effects of the consumption of NK603 (round-up tolerant) maize on rats. The study was conducted over a period of two years and found that test groups were more likely to develop tumours, and at earlier stages, than the control group.

The results of the study, which may have touched on some significant and personal sensitivities within the Ministry of Public Health, were interpreted as pointing to an unacceptable health risk. In a Kenyan government in which ministries compete for authority, this may have been seen by the Ministry of Public Health, who had been largely excluded from the political debate around GMOs, as a chance to have their say. The embargo was put in place almost immediately and without cross-ministry consultation.  The Ministry for Science and Technology, within which a fairly sophisticated biosafety legislation has, over a number of years, been developed and enforced, were, effectively, side-swiped.

Kenya’s pro-biotech lobby, largely composed of politically powerful and well-connected corporations and academic institutions, have been left to wonder what the implications will be for their multiple transgenic products that are currently in the pipeline. As a fundamental part of many of these pioneering technology projects, representative of the Kenya Agricultural Research Institute (KARI), the Agricultural Biotechnology Stakeholders Forum (ABSF), the International Service for the Acquisition of Agri-Biotech Applications (ISAAA), CGIAR institutions, and biotechnology corporations have fervently campaigned for a more promotional and ‘science-based’ approach to technology regulation in Kenya.

This pro-biotech lobby has attempted to close down the biosafety issue, such that it is limited almost exclusively to human health, and they have subsequently argued, time and again, that there is no scientific evidence that there are health risks in consuming GMOs.

Significantly, up to this point, the anti-biotech campaign has predominantly focused on challenging this framing, attempting to open up the idea of regulation such that it turns attention to safeguarding against socio-economic, cultural, and ecological risks, and arguing for a precautionary approach in response to these. This is where the Séralini study is interesting. For some, it has provided a means to ‘fight fire with fire’. For organisations such as the Kenya Organic Agricultural Network, the study has given them the opportunity to say: ‘if you want to talk health and evidence, we can do that too’.

In response, the most obvious line of defence has been to discredit the science behind the Séralini study and, quite frankly, this hasn’t been difficult for biotech scientists to do. A number of curious methodological choices were made by the researchers, including an apparent incompatibility between the breed of rat used and the length of time of the study (Sprague-Dawley rats are highly susceptible to developing tumours naturally over such a long period), unclear statistical analysis methods, and the use of only one control group (in a study of 10 groups). Moreover, the Séralini group has been particularly uncommunicative in response to their critics, inevitably resulting in widespread scepticism about their methods and motives. The European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) conducted an independent investigation into the study and found it to be of ‘insufficient scientific quality’ and a number of anti-GM NGOs, such as Greenpeace, have been quick to disassociate themselves from the study.

However, it may be that it is the contested nature of the evidence, rather than the evidence itself, that is the real gold for the anti-biotech lobby. Dispute over the findings of the Séralini study have necessarily opened up broader questions about the authority of science and the legitimacy of the privileged position that scientific evidence holds within biosafety regulation. It exposes the ambiguities and assumptions of scientific enquiry and, in doing so, offers a real challenge to the way in which the pro-biotech lobby has largely attempted to frame regulation.

In reality, it is likely that the Kenyan embargo won’t last for too long. After all, Kenya is the country that is supposed to be the next African leader in transgenic technology development and it is a hub for international investment. However, the concerns that the ban has created will live in the memories of those consumers and farmers on whom the real success of Kenyan biotechnology depends. Debates over the labelling of GM foods, which was a key issue in the debate prior to the ban, will inevitably have to be resolved on the side of precaution and in protection of consumer choice. But even more significantly, the pro-biotech lobby will have to be more open about uncertainty within its own evidence bases and be willing to engage in a more transparent and plural science-policy process, if its technology is to earn the trust that it needs.